THREE TRAVELING WOMEN WRITERS: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES OF BRAZIL, PATAGONIA, AND THE U.S., 1859-79

The technological progress of the nineteenth century made travelling across the seas and the publishing of travel narratives both possible and desirable. Women used this as an opportunity to gain greater freedom of mobility and authorship. Instead of focusing on solitary travelers, this dissertation brings to the forefront the elaborate rhetoric and discourse strategies married women travel writers used in their narrative to transcend their husband\u27s shadow. The British Lady Florence Dixie (1855-1905), the Argentine Eduarda Mansilla de García (1834-1892), and the American Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz (1822-1907) are pionner women that accompany their husbands on travels to foreign lands and assert their independence by writing and publishing travel narratives. I analyze Dixie\u27s Across Patagonia (1880), Mansilla\u27s Recuerdos de viaje [Memories from Travels] (1882), and Agassiz\u27s A Journey in Brazil (1868) to propose that the three traveling women writers created an elaborate rhetoric, based on aspects of religion, literature, politics, and science, which shaped the dissemination of knowledge in the nineteenth century. Dixie traveled from England to Patagonia in search of adventure. In the narrative, she defends women\u27s equal abilities in outdoor sports and women\u27s smart attire. Mansilla traveled from Argentina to the United States. One of the few women travelers with children, she used a discourse of motherhood to establish her point of view: the superiority of Argentina. However, there is a narrative shift in Mansilla\u27s work because after a few years living in the U.S. she begins to admire American women and the cities\u27 architecture. Agassiz traveled from the U.S. to Brazil with the Thayer Expedition from 1865 to 1866. Her travel narrative is structured as a scientific account informed by natural history discourse. In her work, Agassiz innovates by including aspects of social organization, an anthropologic view, to her arguments. With travel narratives, Florence Dixie, Eduarda Mansilla, and Elizabeth Agassiz found a way to use their sex and marital status to transcend their husbands\u27 career and shape the dissemination of knowledge in the nineteenth century

The Likelihood Ratio Test and Full Bayesian Significance Test under small sample sizes for contingency tables

Hypothesis testing in contingency tables is usually based on asymptotic results, thereby restricting its proper use to large samples. To study these tests in small samples, we consider the likelihood ratio test and define an accurate index, the P-value, for the celebrated hypotheses of homogeneity, independence, and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The aim is to understand the use of the asymptotic results of the frequentist Likelihood Ratio Test and the Bayesian FBST -- Full Bayesian Significance Test -- under small-sample scenarios. The proposed exact P-value is used as a benchmark to understand the other indices. We perform analysis in different scenarios, considering different sample sizes and different table dimensions. The exact Fisher test for $2 \times 2$ tables that drastically reduces the sample space is also discussed. The main message of this paper is that all indices have very similar behavior, so the tests based on asymptotic results are very good to be used in any circumstance, even with small sample sizes

Nucleotide-Binding Oligomerization Domain-1 and -2 Play No Role in Controlling Brucella abortus Infection in Mice

Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain proteins (NODs) are modular cytoplasmic proteins implicated in the recognition of peptidoglycan-derived molecules. Further, several in vivo studies have demonstrated a role for Nod1 and Nod2 in host defense against bacterial pathogens. Here, we demonstrated that macrophages from NOD1-, NOD2-, and Rip2-deficient mice produced lower levels of TNF-α following infection with live Brucella abortus compared to wild-type mice. Similar reduction on cytokine synthesis was not observed for IL-12 and IL-6. However, NOD1, NOD2, and Rip2 knockout mice were no more susceptible to infection with virulent B. abortus than wild-type mice. Additionally, spleen cells from NOD1-, NOD2-, and Rip2-deficient mice showed unaltered production of IFN-γ compared to C57BL/6 mice. Taken together, this study demonstrates that NOD1, NOD2 and Rip2 are dispensable for the control of B. abortus during in vivo infection

Unbiased Risk Estimation in the Normal Means Problem via Coupled Bootstrap Techniques

We study a new method for estimating the risk of an arbitrary estimator of the mean vector in the classical normal means problem. The key idea is to generate two auxiliary data vectors, by adding two carefully constructed normal noise vectors to the original data vector. We then train the estimator of interest on the first auxiliary data vector and test it on the second. In order to stabilize the estimate of risk, we average this procedure over multiple draws of the synthetic noise. A key aspect of this coupled bootstrap approach is that it delivers an unbiased estimate of risk under no assumptions on the estimator of the mean vector, albeit for a slightly "harder" version of the original normal means problem, where the noise variance is inflated. We show that, under the assumptions required for Stein's unbiased risk estimator (SURE), a limiting version of the coupled bootstrap estimator recovers SURE exactly (with an infinitesimal auxiliary noise variance and infinite bootstrap samples). We also analyze a bias-variance decomposition of the error of our risk estimator, to elucidate the effects of the variance of the auxiliary noise and the number of bootstrap samples on the accuracy of the risk estimator. Lastly, we demonstrate that our coupled bootstrap risk estimator performs quite favorably in simulated experiments and in an image denoising example.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure

Unbiased Test Error Estimation in the Poisson Means Problem via Coupled Bootstrap Techniques

We propose a coupled bootstrap estimator for the test error of an arbitrary algorithm that estimates the mean in a Poisson sequence, often called the Poisson means problem. The idea behind our method is to generate two carefully-designed data vectors from the original data vector, by using synthetic binomial noise. One such vector acts as the training sample and the second acts as the test sample. To stabilize the test error estimate, we average this over multiple draws of the synthetic noise. A key property of our coupled bootstrap estimator is that it is unbiased for the test error in a problem where the original mean has been shrunken by a small factor, driven by the success probability $p$ in the binomial noise. Further, in the limit as $p \to 0$, we show that the proposed estimator recovers a known unbiased estimator for the test error, under no assumptions on the algorithm at hand (in particular, no smoothness assumptions). Our methodology applies to two central loss functions that can be used to a test error metric: Poisson deviance and squared loss. Through a bias-variance decomposition, for each loss function, we analyze the effects of the binomial success probability and the number of bootstrap samples and on the accuracy of the estimator. We also investigate our method empirically across a variety of settings, using simulated as well as real data.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure

Uncária tomentosa e a lesão renal aguda isquêmica em ratos

O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar o efeito renoprotetor do fitoterápico Uncaria tomentosa sobre a lesão renal aguda isquêmica induzida pelo clampeamento dos pedículos renais de ratos. A hipóxia e a hipoperfusão geradas com a isquemia intensificam a produção de espécies reativas já presentes no processo inflamatório. Os resultados mostraram que a função renal avaliada pelo clearance de creatinina, a excreção de peróxidos urinários (FOX) e a excreção urinária de malondealdeído (TBARS) desses animais apresentou renoproteção induzida pela UT, provavelmente relacionada às suas atividades antioxidantes.The objective of this study was to evaluate the renoprotective effects of Uncaria Tomentosa (cat's claw) on ischemic acute kidney injury induced by renal clamping in rats. The hypoxia and hypoperfusion increase the production of reactive species already present in the inflammatory process. Results showed that the renal function evaluated by creatinine clearance, the urinary excretion of peroxides and malondealdehyde indexes demonstrated that UT induced renoprotection, probably related to its antioxidant activities.El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar el efecto rinoprotector del fitoterápico Uncaria tormentosa sobre la lesión renal aguda isquémica inducida por el clampeo de los pedículos renales de ratones. La hipoxia y la hipoperfusión generadas con la isquemia intensifican la producción de especies reactivas ya presentes en el proceso inflamatorio. Los resultados mostraron que la función renal evaluada por el clearance de creatinina, la excreción de peróxidos urinarios (FOX) y la excreción urinaria de malondialdehido (TBARS) de esos animales demostró rinoprotección inducida por la UT, probablemente relacionada con sus propiedades antioxidantes